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| by Carmen MacDougall of www.cmacoaching.com The biggest risk is in never taking opportunities in life. If you were to imagine now that the years have flown by and you are now an old lady(or man) talking to the young members of your family. Do you hear yourself talking with regret about the opportunities you let slip by? Or do hear yourself proudly telling people about the life you experienced because you never let any opportunity pass you by. And even though you may have made some mistakes along the way, the important thing is that you learned from those mistakes and that learning helped you to become the successful person you wanted to be? Which story will it be? What is holding you back from achieving what you want? The list could be endless…procrastination, negative thoughts, lack of confidence, justifications as to why you can’t or won’t succeed, self-criticism, mental dramas, etc.? …. Oh, those mental dramas, holding you back before you have even set off on the journey!! Is it fear? Fear of failure, fear of someone new, fear that there will always be someone better than you, fear of competition, fear that you will not be able to attract any opportunities or that you are not good enough and so on? You must be very exhausted creating your “fear” list!! Creating Opportunities Opportunities are there for the taking. It is just a case of noticing them. If you are focusing all your valuable energy on worrying that there might not be any opportunities, then of course you will not notice the opportunities that are there. You will miss the opportunities that you wished for, but you were just too busy worrying. However, If you don’t know what you want and have no clarity in your intentions for your life or career, then how will you know which opportunities you are seeking? Seek and You Shall Find As mentioned previously, it is easy, isn’t it, to give ourselves all the reasons in the world why we cannot do this? E.g. lack of financial resources to pay for a course, not enough time, not confident enough. If only things were perfect and we were not in the situation we were in, then we would be able to create better opportunities…right? Well what if you were wrong? We all have to start somewhere: why not here? Right now? THE MINDSET – BARRIERS & BELIEFS “Whether you believe you can or you believe you can’t, then you are right.” Henry Ford Where do beliefs come from and how do they impact on us? “Beliefs have us. They drive our behaviour. They are intangible and frequently unconscious. They are often confused with facts. But while a fact is what happened, a belief is a generalisation about what will happen. It is a guiding principle.” Joseph O’Connor and Ian McDermott, Principles of NLP, Thorsons. As soon as we are born, those around us, such as our parents, families, friends and teachers programme us with their beliefs, which become the blueprint for our lives. As children, because we do not have the experience of life, we accept the information we are given as a true picture of who we are, what we are made of and what values we have. This programming has an effect on how we receive outside messages both consciously and subconsciously and whether we really believe them or not. The beliefs we have been programmed with will have a strong effect on our self-esteem. Our self-esteem is the picture we carry around of ourselves in our minds. If, as children, we receive positive messages, then we are likely to have a positive and high self-esteem. However, if we have always been told as a child that we are lazy, useless, not academically capable; feel unloved or that we have been negatively compared to our siblings, then we are going to have a very low self-esteem, regardless of whether the messages were correct or not. Those with this negative and low self-esteem have an inaccurate picture of who they are. That is the problem, not the situations that they come across. Beliefs can come from fear that has been instilled in us as children, fear of change, fear of taking risks, fear of not fitting in, fear of not achieving. Therefore, we do not set our goals too high, giving us the safety net of almost assured success. Our parents can all too often instil the above messages out of a belief that they need to protect us from anything that could harm us. It is ironic enough to say that these beliefs actually harm us: they are limiting and they discourage us from establishing the ability to succeed. They determine our attitudes, our direction, our goals and our ability to reach those goals. The attitudes we develop from our peers can also hold us back and so when we try to achieve, we experience it as a struggle. They can alter and influence the way we interact with others; they have an effect on our emotions and feelings. As a result, we then start to repeat the common belief statements “I can’t… I shouldn’t, I couldn’t…” They are disempowering statements and close opportunities that were open to us because we have become experts in collecting all the information our subconscious needs to support our negative statements, which in turn means we act on them. As we grow into adults, the beliefs we had as children may not be appropriate any longer. They will alter according to our surroundings, experiences, study, the career we have and because of education about life in general. E.g. we believe that if we jump out into a busy road, we are likely to be run over by any oncoming traffic. There are two effects of this, one is a cause effect, which links a current experience or event to something similar that happened in the past, and so we assume the same outcome will occur – this is a belief NOT a fact. E.g. “I will never aspire to anything because I was useless at school.” These types of belief give justification to the excuses we use and that we need in order to make sense of what we are currently experiencing or is happening. The second effect is that of ‘making meaning’. We can only give a meaning to an experience by connecting it to a reason. E.g. “I am always ill because I never look after myself.” These are statements or beliefs that cannot, in fact, be proven, but we still need them and use them because they provide meaning. Our beliefs also change according to how we react to change itself. Those with a low self-esteem react to change negatively, causing anxiety and stress, believing that they are unlucky, that bad things are always happening to them and with the attitude, “Trust it to happen to me!” Those with a high self-esteem will welcome change and see it as an opportunity to enhance their lives. It is important to understand your feelings about change, as it is part of knowing who you are and who you want to become. You should ask yourself “How did I REALLY feel? What ACTUALLY caused this feeling? What could I have done differently?” These questions can raise awareness of our negative beliefs and hopefully change them to positive statements of fact and belief. Those with negative beliefs are good at evaluating failure but rarely success. They do not explore what is going on well and why. Those with positive beliefs build upon positive events, which act as a motivator. Even if we grew up with a rationale of positive beliefs, just one bad experience could effectively lower our trust in ourselves to be successful in a particular area of our life. We may all make mistakes, however, we must learn from mistakes or failure, as they are the experiences that provide our learning curve in life. Experience is what shapes our character. Some people tend to carry their mistakes with them for a great length of time, with the belief that bad things always happen to them. They state that they are so unlucky in life and that luck is never on their side. If something good happens, then it must be a fluke and will not last. If you have a tendency towards this type of thinking, it is essential to let those memories go, don’t fixate on failures otherwise the same things is very likely to actually happen. It is amazing how if we tell ourselves something is going to fail, and then our brains will do everything to ensure that it does! To improve your self-belief means renegotiating your objectives, and this can be built on and improved through as series of mental self-esteem building exercises. These exercises could include repeating positive affirmations everyday, writing down how you see yourself and what type of person you believe you are. A good exercise would be to write down what beliefs you gained from those who influenced you, such as your parents, teachers, friends etc and do those beliefs act favourably in your life, if not how can you change them? By listing limiting our beliefs, we need to ask what these beliefs are doing for us, how they are stopping us from moving forward and being the person we want to be, what beliefs would we rather have? By discarding limiting beliefs or ones that no longer serve us, we are then able to recognise our new, true beliefs, which are empowering. We then apply them to our life-purpose or goals, resulting in a higher self-esteem. We become aware of doors opening, interaction with others improves and we learn to accept change in order to reach our goals and become a success – this also builds on our confidence. It is about self-awareness and self-development. So it is evident that those around us can mould us from an early age, into a positive or negative person. Whether they realise it or not, our parents, teachers, fellow students, colleagues will tell us what they believe to be true in the world. Even if our conscious mind does not believe it to be true, it will have an impact on our subconscious, which then leads on to impact on our attitudes. These attitudes will establish our self-esteem, creating our self-image. Coaching, through a series of exercises and questions, raises awareness of our beliefs. We can then establish whether we want to keep those beliefs or, if we would rather be someone else (realistically) – a different person, a new person, then what beliefs can we hold? If we can be programmed mentally as children with limiting self-beliefs then we can be programmed as adults to have positive self-beliefs. With that comes confidence and then success. Recreate yourself as a winner and take responsibility for your life. How to mentally rehearse your success so that you can achieve it more effectively! I am amazed how many people roll up their sleeves and get stuck into their business when they realise that they don’t actually know where they are going with it. What is your end point? If I do not have an end point I cannot get motivated, I cannot make firm plans and then I will not know when I have arrived. So many aim for success when they don’t even know what success means to them and how they will recognise if they have it…worrying isn’t it. Can you see how having a strong vision is so essential? THE VISION is an end point. It should be the first step of any business strategy. It is important to know where you are heading specifically, if you don’t it doesn’t matter which way you are going or does it? You must have an intention so that you do not appear to be adlibbing each day! Whatever you have decided to do in business, do you know why are you going to do it? What do you want to get out of it? Making money is not a full enough answer – Why do you want to make money? Keep drilling down to test the core of what is DRIVING you and the ask “why?” This will lead to the core answer – the light bulb switches on! Then you can ask - Is your vision of where you want your business to go, clear? Is your vision relevant to what is happening in the market place? That means clients’ current demands and competitor activity. To be successful you need to support your passion with all the tried and tested disciplines of a business. My own vision is to inspire and motivate hundreds of people to set up and run their own business and fulfil their optimum performance and reach their potentials. What specifically do you want? In your vision describe what you notice that you can see, hear and feel adopting the positive and supporting beliefs as if it is now. Make it REALLY compelling. Success has to be something you want as much as your need to breathe. By describing your vision in the present tense and using all of your senses and using your imagination (we all have one), you will be tricking your subconscious mind into believing that it has already happened. Your subconscious mind is a powerful tool and cannot distinguish what is real and what is imagined. So imagine the impact of stepping into your future. OK you do not have a full toolbox of valuable information and tools about your business just yet, but, you can pretend for a moment that you have exactly what you wish for. Sometimes it helps to think about what you do not want which helps you to become clearer about what you do want. Think about what success means to you and how you will recognise when you have achieved it because success has different meanings to different people. This, coupled by a specific date, gives you a sense of direction, focus and you are more likely to achieve it. |
| Posted: 18/01/2009 20:32:05 Last Updated: 18/01/2009 20:35:55 |
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